A tailored educational campaign to help reduce food waste that goes to landfill has been launched by the New South Wales Environment Protection Authority (EPA), aiming to assist communities to turn their food scraps into compost.
The ‘Scrap Together’ campaign will utilise food and garden organics (FOGO) green bins to make compost out of bones, meat, fish, grass fruit and vegetable scraps.
EPA organics manager Amanda Kane said its grants of $10,000 will allow local councils with FOGO services to implement the new campaign.
“The Scrap Together campaign takes food waste recycling to the next level,” said Kane.
She said the campaign was prompted by research that showed while people like the service, some residents were unsure of exactly what could go into a green FOGO bin, while others didn’t understand what happened to the scraps from their bins.
Approximately two million tonnes of food and garden waste is sent to landfill each year by NSW households and businesses, leading to rotting and greenhouse gas emissions through the methane this generates.
Kane added that a trial run in three council areas had been successful.
“Residents put more food in the FOGO bin rather than the red bin after learning all food scraps can be composted.
“The resulting compost is also great for the environment because it’s used to improve soil quality on local farms,” she said.
EPA’s grants and the Scrap Together campaign will give impetus to achieving the NSW government’s 2030 goals of net zero emissions from organics to landfill and halving the amount of organics sent to landfill.
Kane said education is pivotal to increasing food recovery from FOGO in the state, and that residents were pleased to be informed that their actions are helping farmers.
